Kathryn Williams • Leave To Remain

‘Fragile’ is an adjective too readily assigned to female singer-songwriters of a predominantly acoustic persuasion, and it certainly has no place when appraising the music of Kathryn Williams. She may be softly spoken and embraceably modest but fragile she isn’t. Here is a woman who, even when at her most musically denuded and open, has her head screwed on tight and knows exactly how it is. Tender is a better choice of word, and one that immediately leapfrogs to mind from the very first song on this, her sixth album in almost as many years. Indeed, as the songs keep coming, this tenderness comes to characterise the album as a whole – see her non-sensationalist account of a girl who lives her life through a webcam for a public that she’s too afraid to meet (‘Sandy L’) or her touching portrayal of the late poet Stevie Smith, a striking talent too often misunderstood for her seemingly morbid outlook (‘Stevie’).

Leave To Remain is the record that Williams has always wanted to make; full of remembrance and boasting a subtle but mile-wide playful streak, it’s the kind of album you can put on the stereo and be gently ushered along the cobbles of your own memory lane, into the arms of a past somebody special. It could be the love of your life or simply the best sex you ever had – that’s what makes it remarkable and surprisingly seductive. Opening with the stunningly easy perfection of ‘Blue Onto You’, during which Williams’s lush layered harmonies gently massage and soothe, Leave To Remain raises the bar even higher as it progresses. Tracks like the aching ‘Sustain Pedal’, ‘Room In My Head’ and the nervous sexuality of standout number ‘Glass Bottom Boat’ give voice to the private fears and feelings we can all align with. It’s the aural equivalent of watching someone you love sleep, of tracing their face with your fingertips and feeling familiar and safe. Or perhaps of that moment after what you thought was purely physical, when you look into their eyes and realise that what’s staring back is something you’ve been searching for forever.

Though admittedly not something that’s overwrought with variation, Leave To Remain makes a clear, concise effort to be grabbing and enticing throughout. In taking the rather understated route, Williams is almost overwhelmingly endearing in her honest and meaningful presence. Each story told stands testament to how grand a scale relationships can reach if we would only let them, wiping clean away any trace of cynicism and the desperation of the daily grind. As the artist herself claims, “you don’t need to know people to love them” — a fact that she has proved a thousand-fold with this release.

[Caw; October 2, 2006]

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